Bolton Wanderers risk repeating summer 2023 transfer mistakes

With the summer transfer window beginning to get into full swing across the EFL, there is growing impatience on the part of Bolton Wanderers supporters at the inactivity and apparent radio silence regarding any sort of business being done .

It is a well-known cliché, but a cliché for good reason, that doing business early is often paramount to a team’s success and there will be growing concern that Wanderers will not be able to do so, although it is still very early days. in summer.

With two months to go until the opening game of the 2024/25 campaign, sporting director Chris Markham, coach Ian Evatt and the rest of the club’s hierarchy will be keen to avoid the mistakes that were made around this time last year.

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Baccus, Flick and Wilson

Last summer, Bolton were very interested in signing Keanu Baccus and it was reported that a deal of around £250,000 had been agreed with Saint Mirren for the Australia international, but protracted negotiations, of which Baccus felt undervalued , they finally failed. down after a while.

At the same time, Bolton had reportedly had interest in German under-21 international Florian Flick, but an ankle injury delayed his move and he moved on loan to Nuremberg.

Another deal that fell through was Kane Wilson. The Bristol City defender was reportedly set to move to Lancashire for a fee of around £200,000, but Bolton delayed and hesitated, opting not to sign the full-back and he eventually moved to Derby County; who finished above Bolton in the top two on the final day of the League One campaign.

While this was happening, the Wanderers wasted valuable time integrating players or even signing substitute players for the positions they wanted to fill. Baccus’s supposed alternative, Paris Maghoma, did not arrive until mid-to-late July and neither did Carlos Mendes Gomes, and both, particularly the latter, are examples of moments Bolton will look to avoid this summer.

The ‘CMG’ experiment

In the case of Carlos Mendes Gomes, he arrived from Luton Town for a fee believed to be in the region of £300,000 in mid to late July, just before the Wanderers’ penultimate pre-season friendly at home against Everton.

The rigidity and specificity of Evatt’s system and style of football are such that the Guinea-Bissau international did not participate at all in the league from the beginning until he was injured in September and had to leave the team at the African Cup of Nations. Nations. In the new year.

His striker, striker or number ten position was also not available, so Evatt attempted to change the system just on the eve of the campaign, and this was a result of the deal being struck too soon before the end of the campaign. the season and its general integration being defective.

A similar situation occurred with the arrival of Maghoma, who arrived on loan from Brentford and ended up becoming Bolton’s Young Player of the Year. However, the former England youth international, who was a key player in the XI at the end of the campaign, did not become a league regular for the Trotters until mid-October.

Maghoma benefited from better injury luck than Mendes Gomes as the season progressed and had no international obligations to deal with, but his addition was also delayed because his signing had been delayed.

Evatt is keen to work with the players for a full pre-season, which is why Bolton are usually so busy during a January transfer window ready for the entire summer, but with some important gaps to fill to mount another promotion challenge, avoiding a sloppy start. and being able to integrate players in key positions will be key.

With this in mind, it is absolutely crucial to avoid what happened last summer and what may or may not have been instrumental to the final outcome of the campaign.